Celebrating One Year of the E-bike Lending Library

Community Pedal Power is excited to celebrate one complete year of operations for the E-Bike Lending Library!

The E-bike Lending Library is a free resource for anyone to try out a variety of different e-bike brands and styles. Over the past year, the E-bike Lending Library has loaned bikes more than 500 times, with borrowers traveling more than 16000 miles since the program began. Since the program launched, we’ve helped more than 150 individuals and families find their way to not just borrowing an e-bike, but purchasing one: this year, these purchasers will travel more than 328,000 miles on e-bikes: enough to circle the globe more than 13 times.

What started as a humble operation with just 3 bikes to loan has now expanded to a fleet of more than 20 bikes, spanning both commuter bikes and a range of styles of cargo bikes. We’ve also expanded our geographic reach, with 3 pickup locations operated by our volunteer librarians.

But the most positive impact of the E-Bike Lending Library can’t be told with numbers. They’re told instead with the smiles on faces of riders and passengers who get to experience the joy of e-bikes, and the testimonials from our borrowers as to the utility and power of the library. Whether it’s in a child riding on the back of a cargo bike, or someone with persistent knee pain who is thrilled at the ability to ride again; whether it’s someone who bikes regularly or someone who hasn’t biked in years, the joy of riding an e-bike for the first time lights up every rider’s face. As an all-volunteer organization, bringing this joy to e-bike library borrowers is what drives this labor of love.

The E-Bike Lending Library is funded primarily by donations from our community. If you would like to support the continued growth of this operation, please donate to support our operations.

Over the past year, we’ve had amazing support from the community of bikers, especially the cargo bike community in the area. Through Facebook groups like Cargo Bikes of Camberville, we’ve connected to volunteers who have turned the library into what it is today. With demonstrators at events like the Cargo Bike Test Drive, we have created a community that is likely one of the fastest growing cargo bike areas in the nation. This growth has enabled us to expand our impact and reach – and that impact and reach has had knock-on effects as well.

Since we’ve launched, we’ve received support from nearly a half dozen bike manufacturers, including Velotric, Bunch, Urban Arrow, Radio Flyer and Aventon; enabling almost all of the growth of the library over the past year. We extend a very special thanks to E-Bikes of New England, who have been a tremendous supporter of the library. They donated our first cargo bike when we were just getting started, and have been strong supporters of our entire community of cargo bike riders. The library would not be what it is today without E-Bikes of New England.

When the E-Bike library initially launched last year, it took more than a month for the first borrower to borrow a bike. We now see more than 80 requests to borrow per month, largely based on the word of mouth of our community. Our goal remains the same as it has always been: helping more people, especially families, transition to bikes as a way of getting around. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished in our first year of operations, and looking forward to what the next year will bring!